[Resto] Druid Guide - 5.0+

Resto Druid Guide
Updated for 5.0.4

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A huge thank you to Dendrek for keeping up amazing druid guides for so long and always adding a lot to this guide. Thanks also to Fumsy for originally updating this for MoP.
I am not currently healing on my druid for progression but will keep up with the guide/theorycrafting and so on until I switch back or decide to permanently change mains. Also thanks to Earen on EJ, Tang and crew on inc Bear, and everyone else who have put work into resto druid theorycrafting.

Searching the guide: To make it easier to search this guide, each section is proceeded by a #. If you need to get to a certain section quickly, hit [Crtl]+[f] to open your browser's "find" option, then type the section number you're looking for, preceded by the # sign. For example "#2.1" (without quotes) will take you to Reforging.

#1. Introduction
I know this guide is long and may seem like a lot, but I have literally put every single thing I possibly can about resto druids into it. If you are a casual raider, a lot of it you wont need. Anyone else, this is pretty much everything you need to know. As always I expect everything I post to be proven by numbers and facts.

Feedback is Welcome:
Arguing and trolling is not. If someone asks a question or makes a comment do not flame them, this guide is here to help people learn and understand. If you see something you would like me to add please comment. If you know something is wrong or outdated please tell me with something to support it. This will be updated a ton so feedback and mature debate is encouraged.

#2. Stats
I will be taking most of my information from EJ and the new rdruid writer, Earen. Thanks to him for taking their guide over.

Several abilities and bonuses may interact with Intellect to provide an increased value for each point of Intellect that you have. There are three main abilities that will have this effect: Leather Specialization (5%), Heart of the Wild (6%) and Mark of the Wild (5%). As such, assuming use of Leather Specialization and MotW, 1 point of intellect will be worth 1.1025. If you add in Heart of the Wild 1 point of intellect will be worth 1.169 (this will also provide you with 0.00046% crit per point). Note that it takes 2168 points per 1% crit, which is about 3.5 times weaker than 1 crit rating.

Intellect will be your best stat for throughput.

Spellpower:
Intellect, without the talent bonuses or crit bonus. Basically a weaker form of Intellect that only appears on weapons and trinkets, but is still good.

Spirit:
Since Intellect no longer increases our mana pools, or has any effect on our regen (or innervate), Spirit has become our primary regen stat. 1 point of spirit will grant you roughly 1.128 MP5 (~.56 MP5 in combat). With Meditation (which is baseline), you will gain 56.4 MP5 in combat for every 100 Spirit.

Take enough spirit, that's basically all anyone can tell you. The amount of SPI you need will vary with your group makeup, the players, the encounters, your gear, along with many other things. When you feel comfortable with your regen, you can move on to other secondary stats.

From EJ: Over the course of a 3-minute period, you get to cast one extra Rejuv (9600 mana) for roughly every 480 Spirit added. Putting those 480 into Mastery instead would make all your heals 1% stronger.

Spirit is not the spell to stack past what you need to get through a fight.

Haste rating:
425 haste rating gives 1% spell haste. This reduces the cast time and GCD of all of our spells, to a minimum of 1 second GCD (there is no effect on Rejuvenation, which automatically has a 1 second GCD from talents). It also causes our HoT's to tick faster and potentially gain extra ticks (see below for more on breakpoints). Aside from a few very significant breakpoints, haste is a weaker secondary stat since it doesn't improve Rejuvenation at all, and increases mana consumption.

Breakpoints:

The first breakpoint(and possibly only) we will want to try to reach if it is not too much trouble is 3043, for your first Rejuv and Tranquility tick.

One thing to note about the Tranquility breakpoint is that it only affects the HoT portion of Tranquility and you do not gain extra ticks of Tranquility itself.

A lot of people agree the second breakpoint isn't worth losing mastery/crit over. If you have a ton of pieces with pure haste on them, and you aren't actually losing a ton of other stats that's the main point you want to consider the second breakpoint. Other than that, it's probably best to stay at the 1st.

If you are utilizing Soul of the Forest, you should aim for the 5730 when possible for additional Wild Growth ticks.

There is no rounding when it comes to haste and there hasn't been for a long time now. You want to get as close to the number as possible if not right on it.

Mastery rating:
480 mastery rating adds 1% to our Harmony bonus. This is essentially a flat bonus to all healing (albeit an additive bonus, so slightly weaker than it looks). Aside from haste breakpoints, mastery is the secondary stat giving the best throughput increase.

Critical strike rating:
600 crit rating gives 1% to crit. All healing effects are able to crit. Due in part to its greater itemization cost, crit adds slightly less throughput than mastery.

For now when choosing secondary stats, take the highest ilvl/socket count, reforge the worst stat if needed.

Excess haste is worthless, don't take it, it's our worst stat.

Mastery vs Crit is explained below.

#2.2 Stat PointersFew Pointers:
Never, use cloth. 5% int is too much to waste. To begin raiding, make sure you have no cloth pieces.Direct Healing:
If you are doing heavy tank healing and relying on LS procs, Crit may be better for you.Raid Healing:
Haste between break points brings nothing. Mastery is better for raid healing.

#2.3 Crit Vs. Mastery in MoP
Between mastery and crit, mastery winds up being a slightly better throughput benefit. In theory you can stack mastery so high that it starts to fall behind crit, but that is unlikely to occur until extremely high gear levels - if at all this expansion. Crit may be stronger in certain limited situations; in particular, if you're frequently spamming direct heals and hoping for high Living Seed procs (i.e. performing heavy tank healing).

#4 Gems
It should be noted that, unlike in past expansions, socket bonuses are generally quite strong. This means that, outside of extraordinary circumstances, you will want to match your sockets for desirable bonuses.

Haste - With the 5% Haste raise buff, you have the 3043 or 6652 Haste breakpoints. Without the 5% Haste raise buff, you have the 5320 Haste breakpoint. Minimal excess haste over these numbers.

Mastery - All Crit and excess Spirit or Haste should be reforged into Mastery. Reforge out of Mastery if you need more Haste or Spirit.

Crit - Reforge out of Crit to one of the other three secondary stats based on the guidelines above unless heavy tank healing.

#6 ConsumablesIt’s important to notice that, unlike gems, secondary stats are equivalent to primary stats in these categories. If you need additional secondary stats in lieu of Intellect, first try to make the necessary changes with gems before relying on these temporary consumables.

#6.1 Food
It's generally better to eat a feast if it's available. But if you need haste for a cap or if your gear has a really low amount of spirit, you may opt for one of those food sources instead. Generally, the priority of food choices should be as follows:

Feasts:
All Banquets provide a minimum* of 250 to a primary stat (Int, Agi, Str) or 375 to Stam for a tank.
However the Banquets may also provide additional benefits depending on the player's primary stat:

#6.2 Potions
In almost all cases, Potion of Focus should be the potion of choice. Try to coordinate with your fellow healers for a chance to drink up. The other potions should only be used in special cases.

#7. Talents
You can now change individual talents with the use of a single Dust of Disappearance (at level 85) or a Tome of the Clear Mind (level 86 or above), purchasable from Inscription vendors. This means, you could use a unique spec for every boss in a given raid without ever having to visit a trainer.

In fact, you should plan on changing talents regularly through the raid night.

There is no longer a cookie cutter talent tree.
For a given fight, there might be some “best options” for you to choose, but every single boss might have different “best options.” With a strong understanding of boss mechanics and class mechanics, you should have some freedom to be creative. I highly encourage creative uses of your talents to counter specific fight mechanics.

NS is a 1min CD burst. Renewal is just weak in general, we have stronger self heals and it's just a waste of a talent. Ward will probably end up wasted healing most of the time, only useful in special circumstances.

Soul is for burst AE for mass raid dmg and great for heavy tank dmg. Tree is still amazing as always being a healing and regen CD. Force has been updated and it a lot better. Tree still has way more flexibility and can be used in numerous ways.

Update: After lots of spreadhseet testing SotF seems to be underwhelming. Hamlet has seen a few things:

The only meaningful use of it is buffing WG, even if it buffs LB it's still unimpressive

The timing is awkward in the first place, depending on your WG/SM cooldowns (for example, the standard 10 and 15)

You're locking into using these spells together (or wasting the talent)--you're imposing a constraint on yourself

Even in the most favorable situation (10s WG, 12s SM), if it beats Incarnation on paper, you've given up flexibility.

Incarnation is a talent that gives strong numbers and adds a lot of flexibility (it's in the form of a powerful timer).

"For the cost of a constant added constraint in your head of what order to cast spells in, I think you'd need a much stronger benefit than SotF is giving."
I have seen elsewhere druids having a better time with ToL, so for right now I agree unless someone has different numbers.

Heart of the Wild - RecommendedOffers a static 6% increase to intellect and also offers the ability to enhance specific abilities outside of the resto specialization for 30 seconds. While the "enhanced" portion of the ability is debatable, the Intellect increase has the potential to be quite strong.

Dream of Cenarius - SkipThe least attractive ability in this tier, Dream of Cenarius will increase your next healing spell (excluding tranquility) by 30 percent after casting wrath. Because of time required to cast wrath, the low healing boost to one ability, and the fact that this cannot effect tranquility, this ability is not a favorite for PvE.

Nature’s Vigil - RecommendedIncreases all damage and healing done by 20% for 30 seconds. It also permits your healing spells to do damage to nearby enemies for 25% of the healing done or 25% of your damage done will heal nearby enemies. This is a strong option due to the increased healing provided, which offers us an additional cooldown during high damage times. The other bonuses of the ability are largely tertiary - but may have times where the extra damage is beneficial to the raid.

#8 Glyphs
The way glyphs work and the types that are available have changed somewhat. The two glyph types are "Major" and "Minor." The Major are the powerful glyphs that make spells stronger and/or change how they work. The Minor glyphs are mostly cosmetic changes that add fun twists to appearances or spells, but don't provide combat bonuses.

Major Glyphs
LB, WG, RG, RJ, and RB are going to be the main glyphs to go to.

RebirthBringing your ally back to life at 100% health can be valuable. It provides some nice leeway for players who accidentally resurrect at inopportune times.

Regrowth I won't be personally using this. I have had far too many times where I used the RG hot to SM and save a life, personal preference will probably be the difference between this and RJ.

One thing to consider though: Crit is our worst stat. By using this glyph you can run as little crit as possible with pretty much no downside since RG is pretty much our most solid direct heal right now. Choose which set up is best for you.

Rejuvenation If you use nourish as a filler this glyph is priceless. Going to depend on your character and playstyle. Spreadsheets seem to show that nourish now does next to nothing, and it's almost no longer worth casting. Will need to see in raids.

Wild Growth If you aren't spec'ed into Soul of the Forest, you should always use this glyph for 25-man raiding; for some 10-man fights you may be too spread out to gain the benefit of an extra target; for 5-mans, you generally won't gain much (if any) benefit from having an extra target so you might want to pass on this glyph. *Until you get the Tier 14 4-piece bonus, you should never use this glyph if you spec into Soul of the Forest for a heavy AoE fight. I highly recommend this glyph once you have the T14 4-piece.* Once you do have the tier bonus, this glyph can actually help bring the SM CD closer to the WG CD when coupled with the Healing Touch glyph.

Glyph of Stamp Roar is also good for certain situations.

Minor Glyphs
Cosmetic so won't be covering them.

#9 Spells
Taken from EJ: Edited by me. Not going to fix what isn't broken.

#9.1 Healing Spells

Healing Touch Has the same cast time as Nourish, but is less efficient and much larger. A typical use is to top off a tank who needs a direct heal. It's raid niche is weird right now. Nourish is basically worthless but RG can also fill that gap without much problem. Rejuv for an efficient large heal, and Regrowth for a fast large heal). It is a good option on Clearcasts, however, whenever you don't need the fast heal from a Regrowth.
Combined with Nature's Swiftness (now on a one minute coolodwn), it provides an emergency instant heal which is somewhat stronger than Swiftmend. You'll usually use it with Swiftmend when you need two consecutive instant heals on someone.

Lifebloom You want to keep this rolling on a tank at virtually all times. It is a strong, cheap HoT, has a very fast tick rate to help stabilize the tank. It is also helps to enable Omen of Clarity procs, so that you enter a clearcasting state. Try to get used to the timing of refreshing this on the last tick without breaking your casting rhythm, both with Lifebloom itself and with Nourish/HT/RG. With the increased duration of Lifebloom, you should always have an opportunity to refresh it in your healing rotation. Always have a Lifebloom stack on one person, even if there's no tank at the moment.

Nourish The Druid's cheap heal. Right now Nourish has no niche and no real reason to be cast. Use LB to refresh LB, it's cheaper and faster. Harmony is 20 seconds, between SM and CC procs it's not really needed for that. HT is the much better option for both if you aren't casting RG.

Regrowth The Druid's fast, inefficient direct heal. When people in the raid need immediate healing to avoid death, use this (also use Swiftmend if it's available). Whenever a Clearcast procs, you can more liberally throw a Regrowth on anyone in the raid who isn't topped off. With the [Glyph of Regrowth], Regrowth becomes a very powerful, fast, direct heal. Regrowth has another important use during Incarnation: Tree of Life, discussed below.

Rejuvenation Though we have to manage our mana, and will not be able to sustain blanketing the raid, this spell is still central to our healing. It does very high amount of healing, is quite efficient, and it enables Swiftmend. Because it is a moderately expensive instant, it can burn your mana quickly if you start spamming it. But whenever you can cast a Rejuv that will not be mostly overheal, it is an excellent choice. In addition, you will often maintain Rejuvenation on a tank who's taking any significant amount of damage. In general, your "filler" healing is a mix of Nourish and Rejuv, based on your mana. It is also worth noting that your rejuvenation will now also instantly heal for the equivalent of one tick upon being cast.

Swiftmend A strong instant heal on a short cooldown. Swiftmend now has efflorescence baked into it as one of the base effects of the ability, so in addition to the instant heal, you will also provide AE healing to those around the target. Additionally, if you are spec’d into Soul of the Forest, your Swiftmend will provide a haste boost to the next spell cast, and is very complimentary when used in concert with Wild Growth.
Swiftmend is one of our best spells. Always be vigilant for people at low HP on whom you might use this. It's great for helping stabilize a tank anytime you see them sit low for more than a GCD, or making sure any raid member is safe while your HoT's do their work. You can Swiftmend another Druid's HoT's, so you want your raid frames to show who's Swiftmendable. Using Swiftmend on cooldown also helps to ensure high Harmory uptime.

Tranquility This spell is very strong now, and outputs massive amounts of healing during its channeling time. Due to the new smart targeting mechanics, it's basically self-working. Can easily save people from dying if you mash it quickly when the raid takes a lot of damage. You can now use it 2-3 times per fight, so depending on the encounter, you might use it reactively when the raid is at low HP, or you might plan its use around certain boss abilities. The spell is now immune to pushback, so you no longer have to protect it with Barkskin.

Wild Growth This remains an excellent spell all-around. It will automatically target the 5/6 lowest-HP people within range (not necessarily including the target). Because the radius is now so high (30y), you can often just cast it on anybody and get a good result. Make sure to cast it anytime an AoE effect hits some people in the raid. In heavy damage situations you'll use Wild Growth on cooldown. Even though it is expensive, it does more than enough healing to be worth it. Wild Growth is unusual in that in can be targeted on a hostile unit and will still apply to the lowest-HP raid members in range of that unit. Additionally, you will want to consider that if you opt for Soul of the Forest you can “prep” your Wild Growth to be more powerful by using the haste bonus from Soul of the Forest to add a nice healing boost. To do this, simply cast a Swiftmend and make sure that Wild Growth is the next spell that you cast. This will be very useful during times when the raid is experiencing heavy damage and needs to be topped up quickly.

Wild Mushroom: Bloom You are able to place three mushrooms on the ground and then "bloom" them to heal all allies within 8 yards of the mushrooms. The mushrooms suffer from diminishing returns for everyone they hit beyond six people. Originally intended to help facilitate the burst AE healing gap in our toolkit, the version of Mushrooms that made it into Mists falls a little short. As such, you will need to determine when mushrooms will be a benefit to your healing, and when other options will be preferable.

Clearcasting: Not a spell, but deserves an entry. Clearcasting lasts 15 seconds and can only apply to the expensive spells Regrowth and Healing Touch, so it's difficult to waste. When Clearcasting procs, you simply have to make sure to cast either a Healing Touch or a Regrowth in the next few seconds. A Healing Touch should generally be your first thought--it is both longer cast and more healing than Regrowth, generally making more effective use of the Clearcast. The tank is a good target; and HT on him for a free heal and LB/Harmony refresh is never a bad option. If, however, people in the raid are in need of a quick heal, a Clearcast is a good chance to throw a Regrowth on them as well. Clearcasting has a 4% chance to proc.

Incarnation: Tree of Life: In addition to the 15% healing bonus, this has a few effects on our healing spells:

Lifebloom: now castable on any number of targets. This is handy since Lifebloom does moderate healing and is very cheap. In a fight where you don't need Tree for other purposes, shifting to cast primarily Lifebloom for 30 seconds lets you use ToL as a very good mana cooldown.

Regrowth: now instant cast. Not a throughput gain since Regrowth is a 1.5 cast anyway, but this allows use while moving and also gives you much quicker reactive healing. Because of all the Lifeblooms you use during Tree of Life, you get a lot of Clearcasting procs from Malfurion's Gift, and can turn each one into a free instant Regrowth. The Regrowths even refresh the Lifeblooms.
If many people in the raid need healing quickly, shifting to cast instant Regrowths can help hit people who need the most healing immediately. Be careful though, as this can be expensive. Still use a good amount of Lifebloom when people aren't in danger of death.

Wild Growth: now targets 2 extra people. Simply makes WG slightly better to use even than it ordinarily is.

As as final note, in my experience, I tend to use ToL form at fixed times each encounter (once I've seen the fight enough times to have a plan), rather than in much of a reactive way.

Soul of the Forest: Similar to Clearcasting, this is not an ability, but also deserves an entry. If you opt to take the Soul of the Forest talent, you will have the ability to add 50% haste to your next every time you cast Swiftmend. The bonus is multiplicative and will result in a flat increase and a multiplier to your existing haste value. This can be very powerful when used smartly. The best way to utilize Soul of the Forest for maximum throughput will be as such:

No 4T14 - Line up SotF with Wild Growth every other Swiftmend. During the alternating Swiftmend, utilize Rejuvenation to consume the Soul of the Forest proc. Continue to make use of Wild Growth on Cooldown, ensuring that every other one is lined up to be used in concert with Swiftmend. You will want to utilize the Wild Growth glyph, regardless of raid size, for maximum output.

4T14 - Once you obtain your four piece set bonus you will want to continue to utilize the Wild Growth glyph, but you will want to sync Wild Growth with Swiftmend every time it is cast. While this will result a small amount of downtime for Wild Growth, the benefit of syncing the two far outweighs the healing lost from the 3 second delay.

Living Seed:While this is not an ability it is worthy of a note, as Living Seed is now baseline for all resto druids. Every time you critically heal a target with a direct heal, you will plant a Living Seed on them that will heal for 30% of the underlying heal when triggered. This seed will be triggered by the next physical attack that the target receives. While not particularly useful for raid healing due to the restriction on how it is triggered, Living Seed can add a nice buffer when tank healing. The down side to the current iteration of Living Seed is that you have little control over when it is planted and triggered, which can lead to Living Seeds that are partially or completely overheal, somewhat reducing the benefits of the spell. Swiftmed, Noursih, Healing Touch and Regrwoth can all plant a Living Seed.

#9.2 Utility Spells

Barkskin Remember that this doesn't use the GCD, so you can cast it almost anytime without disrupting your healing. It should be on an easily-accessible bind, and you should make it second nature to hit this instantly when you foresee a threatening amount of damage coming.

Innervate In general, you will cast this on yourself on cooldown. Use the first one in any encounter after you dip slightly below 80% mana, and then on cooldown after that. Innervate is extremely weak when cast on targets other than yourself, and this is rarely going to be worth doing.

Ironbark Castable on a friendly target, it will reduce 20% of all incoming damage. It has a two minute cooldown, and should be coordinated with the other healers on your healing team and treated as a tanking/raid cooldown.

Might of Ursoc This spell is a good defensive CD, either for when you know you're about to take a lot of damage or after you just took a lot of damage and your health is very low.

Nature’s Cure On an 8 second cooldown, this will remove poison, magic and curses. It will be important to prioritize cleanses in order to make sure the most imported debuffs and/or the most important people are cleansed first. It will likely also be important to work with your healing team to organize cleanses on any encounter where the need to cleanse multiple people exists.

Rebirth This will allow for an in combat resurrection of an ally. The most important issue is to avoid wasting it, especially now that the raid can only use a limited number per attempt (3 in 25-man, 1 in 10-man). First, make sure to coordinate with other Druids/DK's/Warlocks in your raid using macros or Vent so two of you don't cast on the same target. Second, people love to accept the resurrection as soon as it appears and die to something immediately. It can be good to warn them if it's a bad time to accept.

Your direct healing is increased by an additional 10% and casting your direct healing spells grants you an additional 10% bonus to periodic healing for 20 sec. Although any direct heal and Wild Mushroom: Bloom can proc Harmony, the 20 second duration of the buff allows consistent use of Swiftmend (and Omen of Clarity procs) to maintain 100% uptime, making our mastery essentially passive.

How it works:

Harmony doesn't update a hot as it's ticking. If you cast Rejuv and get Harmony a few ticks in, it doesn't update it.

If you cast a hot and midway through you gain Harmony, it doesn't update it.

Lifebloom: Harmony effects all the stacks based on the last one cast. If harmony is only active on the last LB stack, it effects them all. If harmony is on the 1st 2 and not the 3rd, LB doesn't get the effect.

Harmony will effect the RG hot if that RG is a new or refreshed Harmony.

Harmony will effect a HoT you cast directly after a direct heal, it won't lag.

If harmony falls off during Tranq, the ticks after it won't have the buff.

#10.2 SymbiosisCreates a symbiotic link which grants the Druid one ability belonging to the target's class, varying by the Druid's specialization. Also grants the target one Druid ability based on their class and combat role. Lasts 1 hour and persists through death. Cannot be cast on other Druids. Effect cancelled if Druid and target become too far apart.

Your Symbiosis target might very well change on a fight-to-fight basis.

#11. Healing Strategies
No matter what you are doing, raid or heroics or regulars, raid healers or tank healers, keep LB on the tank. If by letting it bloom, the heal will not go to overheal, let it bloom. If you are properly geared LB wont even make a dent in your mana before it regens back up. In intense healing situations, most of the time its not worth letting bloom because you will need those 3 GCDs.

#11.1 Healing DungeonsDon't heal what you don't have to. If your rogue gets hit by something random once, WG or Rejuv will be enough, no need to spam HT/RG on him. Don't waste mana.

You aren't going to have everyone at 100% all the time. Especially in heroics, 99% of the boss fights most damage is avoidable. If you are playing with people who struggle with mechanics, yes, you will have mana problems, and people will die. If someone stands in something, explain to them you don't have the mana to heal through ignoring mechanics.

Nourish is no longer a useful filler unless the tank is literally sitting right at 100% most of the time and you have nothing else to do.

Use WG. Use SM every CD. It's also a very cheap spell. It's good even if it's just on the tank.

Don't be afraid of tree. If there is an aura mechanic pop ToL, LB everyone once and start going back through the line to stack to 3 and refresh. When CC pops, throw an instant RG on whoever needs it.

Along with that, do not be afraid of Tranq. It's a very good spell, use it.

MoP heroics are pretty faceroll even with the lowest gear you are able to enter in. If your tank chain pulls or your group is bad just pop your CDs and drink between pulls.

Don't worry about Wild Mushrooms in a dungeon environment. If you're able to work it in on a dungeon boss and get some extra healing, good for you, but as of right now this spell is relatively week, and dungeons tend to have a lot of movement.

#11.2 Healing Raids Prioritize whatever your assigned healing role is and be aware of your mana, but assist with other healing assignments when you can.

Pre-hot: If you know a big ability is coming be ready with Rejuvs already out and WG and Efllo preparing to be used.

Use Wg on CD: unless it's only going to overheal. If 2 players need the heal, it's worth casting WG is smartcast, as a class dependent on HoT's we want to heal proactively, not react to it.

Rely on your hots: We can direct heal now, but our HoTs are still where we shine. Direct heal if you need to, but still focus on your HoTs.

Keep LB on a tank at ALL times. No reason not too, It's cheap, it procs CC, it heals for a ton.

Use Incarnation: ToL when needed (but always use it 1-2 times per fight).

Use Tranq: It's amazing, know strats and the best time to use it (as in save it for half and a badly timed knockdown in P2)

Know when to use Efflo. Yes, it's great on one target now, but it's better on multiple.

Use Innervate any time you dip to 75% mana.

If you know your raid will be stacking in a set location, try to pre-plant Shrooms in that spot while you have some down time from healing.

Tank healing: Depending on your gear this will change a lot. Nourish is basically a waste of a casttime now. Fill with HT, burst with RG, NS/HT, and SM. Remember Ironbark!

#12 Professions Most professions provide the same benefit to a raiding Resto Druid: 320 Intellect or 640 of some secondary stat. The exceptions are Leatherworking and Tailoring.

#13. UI
Your UI is completely up to you and what you like. The only thing I can fully talk about unbiasedly is how it should be set up.
You need as much of your middle screen clear as possible. Don't put your bars in the middle, don't have your map in the middle, keep it clear.

Put your healing bars(grid, healbot, vuhdo) in the middle lower screen. I can not stress enough how bad it is to place it anywhere else. When you have your bars there is clears up the middle of your screen so you can see what's on the ground, in the air, left and right of you, and where people are at. As humans we have limited peripheral vision especially when we are focused on something. If your bars are lower mid screen, you will still be able to easily see everything going on around you.

#13.1 Macros

Now that we will be more frequently changing single talents, it makes sense to have the talents from a given tier bound to the same key. I recommend making a macro that incorporates all the abilities from a single tier so you don't need to constantly mess with your bars/bindings.

Vuhdo* is the best. It will increase your reaction time, and its convenience will allow you more focus for other mechanics. They are all pretty much the same. I'm not going to go into this largely, but from a lot of people testing all 3 on many different factors many agree(for right now at least) Vuhdo is superior, though not by a lot.

#15.1 Tier Gear
T14 2 Piece Bonus: The 2T14 will be quite attractive as we enter the first tier of raiding, due to the reduced mana cost of Rejuvenation (10%). Use it as soon as you can get it.

T14 4 Piece Bonus: The 4T14 is also quite good largely due to the fact that the decreased cooldown on Swiftmend will make Soul of the Forest more powerful.

T15 2 Piece Bonus: This bonus will be quite nice in a 25 man setting due to the likelihood of consistently having four targets grouped for Swiftmend, but may not be as useful in a 10 man setting.

T 15 4 Piece Bonus: The value of this bonus is about a 16% increase to rejuv's healing, the later, more powerful, ticks are more likely to be overhealing - which synergizes well with the new mushroom format.

Note: I did not add any crit trinkets to this list, with the assumption that we will favor trinkets with some form of mana return in this first tier. The only exception is the Direbrew trinket, as it may be an easy "gimme" starter trinket.

Spirits will probably be BiS. If random Int doesn't end up being as bad as it used to be, Seal will be 2nd best by far. If it's still as bad as it used to be, DMC will be better for regen, Figurine for throughput.

After that if you need regen Price will be best followed by Barrel. Vial is a fine choice too if you can't get one. Zen alch stone is good for regen, reforge to spirit. If you need less regen can reforge that to haste cap or leave mastery.
Egg isn't awful. Random proc haste is by far our worst trinket choice but if you have shit trinkets or don't need as much regen(just doing 5s and lfr) it's a good choice.

Blogs: I wont be adding blogs. A lot of time they end up being filled with opinion and filled with advice about content the players haven't even seen yet. Search around, there are a lot of good ones, ok ones, and bad ones out there. In general, looking at discussions at places like EJ will end up giving you the most accurate advice.*

I would put cure and natures majesty as NEED talents along with furor. The crit you you get from NM is worth it thanks to the adjustments, and the increased effect to your innervate from furor will be needed as we should be using it on CD in a heavy damage fight. Cure is an added bonus to be able to dispell high damage magic from tanks and there wont always be a dispeller with you in 5 mans.

NS kinda borders on optional, it is a healing style point. I use it as an extra ZOMG cd macroed with HT. Same with BotG. at lvl 85 you will most likely be able to incorporate it into a direct healing spec, as harder hitting hots on a tank will still be wanted.

Haste is still your best throughput stat OUTSIDE of RJ. The more you RJ, the less you need haste.

I would put cure and natures majesty as NEED talents along with furor. The crit you you get from NM is worth it thanks to the adjustments, and the increased effect to your innervate from furor will be needed as we should be using it on CD in a heavy damage fight. Cure is an added bonus to be able to dispell high damage magic from tanks and there wont always be a dispeller with you in 5 mans.

NS kinda borders on optional, it is a healing style point. I use it as an extra ZOMG cd macroed with HT. Same with BotG. at lvl 85 you will most likely be able to incorporate it into a direct healing spec, as harder hitting hots on a tank will still be wanted.

RJ?

Rejuv.
Personally, I consider NM pretty much necessary but a lot of other people don't. I will probably put it as need though and go with my instinct.
I also consider furor the same way. Even though MG > furor for regen it's only 3 points instead of 6 for MG/NG.

I'm not putting cure just because some people wont take it an will be fine. Will I be making all our healers take their advanced cure? Hell yes I will, in my mind there is no excuse not to. But a lot of people will disagree with that saying 'I never have to cure anyway'. I'll probably put that to both as situational.

and there is a direct correlation between haste and rejuv and overall throughput, the more haste you have, the more HPS rejuv does, so saying that you wont need haste if you spam more rejuvs would lend twards the terrible meter topping healing of rejuv/wg spamming that we had in wotlk instead of the lifesaving healing that triage healing provides

It's just haste as a stat in general. Haste effects all other spells way more than it does RJ. So the more RJs you throw out, the weaker haste becomes. I assume this is because it doesn't effect the GCD of RJ at all. You will still need haste, just the value of it decreases the more you use rj.
It's more for: "Once you hit caps what do you get next?" kind of situations. At least that's where I think Hamlet is trying to go with it.

I'm looking into leveling a resto druid for cataclysm, so my experience is secondhand at best, but I thought I'd see if I could contribute to the healing spells section. Not sure how much I like the formatting, but content over presentation, right?

Cast times are before haste, of course. Spell power coefficients are taken from wowpedia and assume all relevant talents are learned. (Note that wowpedia's page has not been updated for the Improved Rejuvenation changes.) Healing values are for level 85.

Healing spells:

#1. Rejuvination: 26% of base mana, instant cast. Heals the target for 1307 + (45.12% SP + 15% from Improved Rejuvenation) every 3 sec for 12 sec. [Gift of the Earthmother: Also instantly heals for 15% of the total periodic effect, or 902 + 31.13%(?) SP.]

This heal is central to the druid healing strategy because it is strong and efficient (albiet expensive) while also triggering our mastery and Swiftmend. Without any haste, Rejuv has approximately a 59% chance to trigger Revitalize at least once over its duration (granting you 2% of your base mana per proc); realistically, you'll likely have five tics per cast, giving you closer to a 67% chance to proc. In short, if Rejuv won't be mostly overhealing, it's an excellent choice. In addition, maintaining Rejuv on a tank is a good idea for two reasons: It's a good hot and it grants Symbiosis to Lifebloom. Also of note: The talent Swift Rejuvenation lowers the GCD of Rejuvenation to 1 second. Because Rejuv is thus GCD capped for trees, haste becomes a less valuable stat the more you rely on Rejuv. First available at level 1.

#2. Nourish: 10% of base mana, 3s cast (-0.5s from Naturalist). Heals a friendly target for 2403 to 2791 (+ 100.57% SP). Heals for an additional 20% if you have a Rejuvenation, Regrowth, Lifebloom, or Wild Growth effect active on the target.

This spell is slow and doesn't heal for a lot. To put things in perspective, it heals for approximately two ticks of Rejuv. However, it's very cheap, which makes it a good filler heal. Part of managing your mana is knowing when you need to cast Nourish and when you can afford to use a more expensive heal (and part of managing your thoroughput is knowing when you can afford to cast Nourish and when you need to cast a bigger heal). Because it refreshes Lifebloom via Empowered Touch, the tank is almost always a good target for a Nourish. First available at level 78.

#3. Wild Growth: 27% of base mana, instant cast, 10s cooldown. Heals up to 5 [glyph: 6] [Tree of Life: +2] friendly party or raid members within 15 yards of the target for 2863 (+ 11.51% SP) over 7 sec. Prioritizes healing most injured party members. The amount healed is applied quickly at first, and slows down as the Wild Growth reaches its full duration.

An excellent raid healing spell. EJ claims it affects party/raid members within 30 yards of the target, but that appears to be a lie. Note that this spell targets the six lowest percentage HP party members within 15 yards of the target; thus, you could cast it on an enemy warlock channeling Hellfire in the middle of your friends and it would work. First available through talents at level 69.

#4. Lifebloom: 7% of base mana, instant cast. Heals the target for 2280 (+ 78.4% SP) over 10 sec. When Lifebloom expires or is dispelled, the target is instantly healed for 2306 (+ 38.57% SP + 15% - Gift of the Earthmother). This effect can stack up to 3 times on the same target. Lifebloom can be active only on one target at a time. [Tree of Life: No limit on the number of targets.]

This is the tank healing hot. It ticks once every second, stabilizing tanks quickly, and triggers Symbiosis, Revitalize (and thus Replenishment), and Malfurion's Gift/Omen of Clarity. One trick is to maintain three stacks of Lifebloom on both tanks when you enter Tree of Life form and use Omen procs for free Healing Touches to maintain the stacks afterwards. Each stack adds to both the hot and the bloom, so with two stacks you tick for 456 + 15.68% SP and bloom for 4612 + 77.14% SP (+15% GotE); with three stacks you tick for 684 + 23.52% SP and bloom for 6918 + 115.71% SP (+15% GotE). First available at level 64.

This is a really big heal (about 2.5 times as big as Nourish, though the gap widens as spell power increases), but it's less efficient than other options. For raid healing, it doesn't have much of a niche (Nourish, Rejuv, Regrowth, and WG covering the small, efficient, fast, and aoe niches, respectively), but it can be useful if a target isn't in danger of dying during its cast time. It's useful for tank healing because it refreshes Lifebloom while also healing a fair amount. However, don't expect NS-HT crits to be godly against 140k tank HP pools. First available at level 3.

#6. Swiftmend: 10% of base mana, instant cast, 15s cooldown. Consumes a Rejuvenation or Regrowth effect on a friendly target to instantly heal the target for 5229 (+15% from Improved Rejuvenation). [Glyph: Requires, but does not consume, Rejuvenation or Regrowth on the target.]

I looked for a coefficient for this but couldn't find a recent one. Sometime in mid-October the coefficient was apparently 33.145% SP, but, y'know, beta.

As might be expected from a specialization perk spell, Swiftmend is another very important spell in our arsenal. It's a fast, powerful, and cheap heal on a short cooldown. Note that you don't have to be the druid who cast the hot on the target to be able to cast this. If you're specced into Nature's Bounty, your Healing Touch and Nourish crits may (33/66/100% chance) reduce the remaining cooldown of Swiftmend by 0.5s.

#6.5. Efflorescence: When you heal with your Swiftmend spell you also sprout a bed of healing flora underneath the target, healing all nearby friendly targets within 15 yards for 30% of the amount healed by your Swiftmend over 7 sec. Healing effectiveness diminishes for each player beyond 6 within the area.

This is essentially a separate spell from Swiftmend. If all you do with Swiftmend is heal the tank, this is a 30% Swiftmend hot for said tank. If you can catch a bunch of melee (or even casters grouped for Defile-type effects, though that's much more rare), you suddenly have a much more powerful heal available. Learning to look for clumps of people taking damage is difficult, but it pays off. Of course, movement may screw with your plans, especially if your tank is used to running out of the green stuff.

This is the fast, inefficient heal. If you have an Omen of Clarity proc, this is a good place to dump it. The hot isn't a big deal; its saving grace is that it tics every two seconds. Another good thing about this spell is its interaction with Nature's Bounty and Living Seed; Nature's Bounty increases Regrowth's crit chance by 20/40/60%, and Living Seed causes your Regrowth crits to put a mini-"bubble" on the target. First available at level 12.

Wowhead's pages for this spell are kinda funky! One of them scales with level and one of them is channeled - in reality, this spell does both. The numbers should be about right, however.

On a related note, the spell power coefficient for this spell is 107.43%, but it's unclear whether that applies to the direct heal, the hot tics(!), or both(!!).

This is your massive AoE heal. Pop Barkskin before you cast this, because losing channel time to damage isn't fun. It's a smart heal, like Wild Growth, so you basically just have to sit back and watch those guys in the fire not die. Because of the cooldown, you're not likely to use it more than once per fight, so you probably don't want to use it before an AoE actually hits things. Also note that you don't have to worry about line of sight to your targets - while this applies more in PvP, it could still come in handy in PvE.

Utility spells:

#1. Moonfare: The best utility is killing things with your sky lasers! Don't listen to your raid leader, WoW is much more fun when there's a crazed troll jumping around the backline sending bolts of lunar goodness into the boss.
#2. Meditation: Allows 50% of your mana regeneration from Spirit to continue while in combat. This is what makes spirit useful to us; remember to balance thoroughput with regen.
#3. Gift of Nature: Healing increased by 25%. Remember this when you change to your moonkin spec and try to heal.
#4. Symbiosis: Our mastery bears mentioning again. If you (you, not any druid) have a hot on a guy, your healing spells do (10 + 1.25 * Mastery)% more healing.
#5. Mark of the Wild: Buffs the target's Strength, Agility, Stamina, and Intelligence by 5%. If the target is in your party or raid, it buffs everyone else in the party or raid as well. Never forget this.
#6. Revive: Out of combat res. 72% base mana, 10s cast. Revives target to 35% hp/mana.
#7. Rebirth: 2s cast, 10 min cd, no cost. In combat res (20% hp/mana). Oh my god do not fail at this. I've raided with so many bad druids who could not rebirth to save their life (literally, in a few cases). If you are not 100% sure that you know when to use this, never use it until the raid leader calls for it. When they do call for it, use it quickly on the guy they tell you to. Remember that 25-man raids only get three combat reses per encounter (that includes Revive, Soulstone, and Reincarnate) and 10-mans only get one.

Seriously, do not fail at this. It needs to be used only when it can turn a battle from a wipe to a win. If you can't tell if you're going to down the boss without that healer, or if resing the tank won't stop the wipe, don't use it until you're told. Always say something when you use a battle res - they're just that important.
#8. Remove Corruption: 17% of base mana, instant cast. Nuke a curse and a poison debuff off the target. Every healer has one of these, and every healer can talent theirs to also nuke off a magic debuff. Debuffing is vital, but so are talent points; talk with your guild leader about whether you should spend that point on being able to remove magic or whether you should spend it on e.g. Nature's Bounty.
#9.

Ok, I admit, I started this project too late. I'm now way too tired to finish this and the presentation on the utility spells is kinda tanked. Will finish this up when I have time. (Note to self: need to cover Thorns, Innervate, Hurricane, Soothe, Hibernate/Cyclone, Barkskin, and ToL [+ wrath dps], and link things properly.)

Furor will be a needed talent, for any aoe heals(melee being retarded, and healing anything but the tank), along with natures majesty. you will be starved for crit/haste ect from what you are used too.

All in all, im not too impressed with new resto druid healing. sitting there spamming nourish to keep LB up while waiting for someone to take damage, then HT when the tank takes a 30k hit. its kinda boring

honestly, i rolled a resto druid because of their niche in a raid, the ability to heal the hell out of everyone. I did this in BC, even while LB rolling on tanks. there wernt many fights, but i had fun and got to use everything.

The same went for wrath when 4.0 came out. I thought that they had finally fixed druids to be able to use all of their spells in a raid. and we did, we were able to use regrowth, rejuv, wg, nourish(if tank healing). Either spec could keep a tank alive, and heal the raid.

But from what the damage is looking like, direct healing talents are required. Im sitting here healing a 5 man and i can spam nourish all day long and not run oom, random HT out here and there, and back to nourish to keep everything copacetic. its boring, im ranting, tired, and annoyed.

Just my two cents, i'm no theory crafter so what i am suggesting may have been proved wrong somewhere else but i like to think i do know my class fairly well.

First of all, i have done one or two raids at 85 and have needed my innervates for myself. I was playing with a shaman who can DPS for mana back and a disc priest who tells me he is fine for mana as he has his own mana cooldowns (and can also DPS for mana if he has too) so i ditched the innervate glyph which is a wasted glyph slot if not needed on someone else and have replaced it with the Healing Touch glyph. NS used alongside Healing Touch is not as powerful as it once was with the high health pools people have now but i find i am using HT with Omen procs and also favouring it over Nourish when tanks have dropped low and lowering the cooldown of an instant 30k heal is nothing to be ignored if you ask me.

My general opinion of resto druids atm is that they are not as bad as people have been saying they are but there are still a few things i am unhappy with mostly caused by the high health pools. I am all for making healers harder to play because in wotlk a monkey could have played a resto druid fairly succesfully and i understand that they want to make mana matter more but i dislike that we have no powerful heal which will top people up. It stresses me out that we are forced to leave people at 60% because we need to conserve our mana, even though i know they have high enough HP to survive any damage at 60% it still goes against my gut instincts to not push people back to 90%+. AOE healing is also very weak. Efflorescence for example heals for 500-600 per tick, it heals for maybe 10% of someones HP which seems to be next to nothing to me.

In short, i have no problems with the higher spell mana costs i just wish our spells were a little more effective.

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." — Marilyn Monroe

I agree. Healing is indeed pretty boring right now. I use all my spells but still not as much as I would like. I understand the middle triage heal is the heal you should use most, and you can spam, but it's very repetitive and dull. I still do it and don't have a ton of mana problems, but I'd rather have other options.\

I also think I'll be dropping innervate for HT. When Ej made their guide(which I based a lot of info off of) mana was a lot different. I'm not sure the last time he updated, but I use HT a lot more than innervating someone else. Yesterdays raid we cleared the 4 bosses we tried without *too* much of a mana issue and as said, I never had to innervate anyone, just got to save it for myself.

I really need to start updating this, finals are over monday so hopefully I'll have some time.

Just a note from a guide POV, goin into 5m reg 85 instances in 318-333 gear is relatively easy. I did the same in a heroic and every fight killed my mana, though I wasn't in a max mana spec. Might wanna stick a min 5man guide in there, with something indicating that feeling overly comfortable in 5m reg 85s should not lead you to thinking you didn't really need so much spirit on your gear or that super mana spec. Further research shows the only spell mistake I was making was an avoidance of nourish, since it was reviled in 4.0.1 lvl80 by most of what I heard. Finished the heroic in question but man it was not a cake walk.

Healing is hard. Healing as a Druid is, from what I gather, even harder. Most specifically in cata.

But it is fun.

My 0.2 so far... I have avg iLevel 335 gear so far and with 2/3/36 I have had some serious mana problems in heroics. The counter to this is simple... get Spirit. Do not be quick to reforge it. Be quicker to enchant/gem it.

Once you start getting closer to 246, I believe only then should one start focusing their stats away from spirit.

Over the course of an average heroic 5man bossfight, what would you say is worth more mana? 2 points in moonglow or 2 points in furor?

I really don't wanna miss natures swiftness, and I like effloresence too so 3 points there.

Moonglow is better for mana hands down. If you take 3/3 furor, omen, and skip all but the crit talent in balance and are still having mana problems you may need to drop some talents to get Moonglow. Furor is better than moonglow if you can easily last a fight without it since it frees up 3-6 points.

As for crit: Once you hit the 1st RJ cap there is a big gap between being able to get the next tick. Ej testers came to the conclusion your RJ will do more hps with crit than haste depending on caps. So, on bosses you RJ spam according to spreadsheets, crit gives more throughput than haste point to point.